Let us think of education as the meansof developing our greatest abilities,because in each of us there is a privatehope and dream which, fulfilled, can betranslated into benefit for everyone andgreater strength for our nation.– John F. Kennedy

As the new year begins I want to address the importance of selecting a coach for your child’s development in tennis.

The education of the high performance tennis coach requires years of training both formally and informally and this learning never ends. The quote above highlights the importance of continuing education for every individual, but are especially relevant for the tennis coach. To be a successful coach, a good overall understanding of tactics, technique, biomechanics, growth and development, strength and conditioning, mental skills training, coaching theory and many other disciplines are very important for the development of the player.

The USTA High Performance Coaching Education Department provides high quality resources to help the coach stay current with the most relevant and practical education materials to improve the quality of training of tennis players. The High Performance Coaching department provides a number of important resources for all coaches working with competitive players—from children playing with the red ball on a 36 foot court all the way up to ATP and WTA professionals.

Listed below are the major sections that a certified High Performance Coach possess in their skill set.

General Coaching for Tennis10 and Under Tennis High Performance Coaching Sports Medicine & Injury PreventionStrength & Conditioning for TennisSport Science for Tennis

As tennis continues to advance with exciting opportunities for the coach, the ones who will continue to succeed are the coaches willing to stay current on the latest information. The USTA Coaching Education department provides these opportunities as one continues their education as a tennis coach in order to help your players succeed in tennis and in life. At Johnny Angel Tennis we are certified USTA High Performance Coaches who stay on the cutting edge of sports science and tennis. Your child deserves the best.

Johnny

]]>Eye On The BallTennis Blog2012-12-01T10:32:45-05:00http://www.realmacsoftware.com/blog/files/c5e29304b3680620740c6a7d5cf89cd7-6.html#unique-entry-id-6http://www.realmacsoftware.com/blog/files/c5e29304b3680620740c6a7d5cf89cd7-6.html#unique-entry-id-6Keeping Your Eye on the Ball
Recently, researchers in England set out to
determine whether weekend golfers could improve
their game through one of two approaches. Some
were coached on individual swing technique, while
others were instructed to gaze fixedly at the
ball before putting. The researchers hoped to
learn not only whether looking at the ball
affects performance, but also whether where we
look changes how we think and feel while in action.
Back in elementary school gym class, virtually
all of us were taught to keep our eyes on the
ball during sports. But a growing body of
research suggests that, as adults, most of us
have forgotten how to do this. When scientists in
recent years have attached sophisticated,
miniature gaze-tracking devices to the heads of
golfers, soccer players, basketball free throw
shooters, tennis players and even competitive
sharpshooters, they have found that a majority
are not actually looking where they believe they
are looking or for as long as they think.
It has been less clear, though, whether a
slightly wandering gaze really matters that much
to those of us who are decidedly recreational athletes.
Which is in part why the British researchers had
half of their group of 40 duffers practice
putting technique, while the other half received
instruction in a gaze-focusing technique known as “Quiet Eye” training.
Quiet Eye training, as the name suggests, is an
attempt to get people to stop flicking their
focus around so much. But “Quiet Eye training is
not just about looking at the ball,” says Mark
Wilson, who led the study, published in
Psychophysiology, and is a senior lecturer in
human movement science at the University of
Exeter in England. “It is about looking at the
ball for long enough to process aiming
information.” It involves reminding players to
first briefly sight toward the exact spot where
they wish to send the ball, and then settle their
eyes onto the ball and hold them there.
]]>Exercise and AppetiteTennis Blog2012-11-10T19:03:04-05:00http://www.realmacsoftware.com/blog/files/98fcd36f01f55b5a63670e0d2d5123e0-5.html#unique-entry-id-5http://www.realmacsoftware.com/blog/files/98fcd36f01f55b5a63670e0d2d5123e0-5.html#unique-entry-id-5Exercise may actually suppress your appetite, two new studies suggest
When most people finish a hard workout, they want
a reward ­ possibly a sandwich, or some pancakes,
or maybe even a burger and fries. What they don’t want? To not eat anything.
And yet, a few recent studies found that moderate
intensity aerobic training could actually
decrease your appetite or increase your feelings
of fullness or satiety. Strange, right? Previous
research has shown that people who exercise often
reward themselves with food, increasing overall
calorie consumption, and often sabotaging their
weight loss goals. So, what gives?
“Exercise can definitely suppress hunger,” says
Barry Braun, director of the Energy Metabolism
Laboratory at the University of Massachusetts,
Amherst, who has co-authored multiple studies on
the subject. How, why, and for how long afterward
is something researchers are still working out.
They do know that workouts trigger changes in the
hunger hormone ghrelin and the satiety hormones,
PYY and GLP-1 ­ though research has yet to establish the exact relationship.
A recent study published in the journal
Metabolism found that perceived fullness ­ both
while fasting and after eating ­ was higher among
participants after 12 weeks of aerobic training,
but not after resistance training for the same
amount of time. And another study out of Brigham
Young University revealed that women appeared to
be less interested in food on mornings when they
walked on a treadmill for 45 minutes than on days they didn’t.
]]>PerspectiveTennis Blog2012-10-28T09:12:10-04:00http://www.realmacsoftware.com/blog/files/f700552b3a2739226c10b6f69162cbc8-4.html#unique-entry-id-4http://www.realmacsoftware.com/blog/files/f700552b3a2739226c10b6f69162cbc8-4.html#unique-entry-id-4A change in perspective could be all it takes to succeed in school

Knowing the right way to handle stress in the classroom and on the sports field can make the difference between success and failure for the millions of students going back to school this fall, new University of Chicago research shows.

"We found that cortisol, a hormone released in response to stress, can either be tied to a student's poor performance on a math test or contribute to success, depending on the frame of mind of the student going into the test," said Sian Beilock, associate professor in psychology at UChicago and one of the nation's leading experts on poor performance by otherwise talented people.

She is the author of "Choke: What the Secrets of the Brain Reveal About Getting it Right When You Have To," released this month in paperback.

In a new paper published in the current issue of the journal "Emotion," Beilock and her colleagues explore the topic of performance failure in math and show, for the first time, that there is a critical connection between working memory, math anxiety and salivary cortisol.

Working memory is the mental reserve that people use to process information and figure out solutions during tests. Math anxiety is fear or apprehension when just thinking about taking a math test. Cortisol is a hormone produced by the adrenal gland and associated with stress-related changes in the body; it is often referred to as the "stress hormone."

Tracking math anxiety in students

Beilock and her team tested 73 undergraduate students to determine their working memory capacities and their level of math anxiety. They also measured cortisol levels (via a saliva sample) before and after a stressful math test. They published the results in a paper titled "Choke or Thrive? The Relation between Salivary Cortisol and Math Performance Depends on Individual Differences in Working Memory and Math Anxiety."

Among students with low working memories, there was little difference in performance related to either cortisol production or math anxiety, the study found. Students with lower working memory exert relatively less mental effort to begin with, researchers found, so taking a stressful test didn't drastically compromise their performance.

Among people with large working memories, those who were typically the most talented, rising cortisol either led to a performance boost or a performance flop — depending on whether they were already anxious about math. For students without a fear of math, the more their cortisol increased during the test, the better they performed — for these confident students, the body's response to stress actually pushed them to greater heights. In contrast, for students with more anxiety about math, surging cortisol was tied to poor performance.

"Under stress, we have a variety of bodily reactions; how we interpret these reactions predicts whether we will choke or thrive under pressure," Beilock said. "If a student interprets their physiological response as a sign they are about to fail, they will. And, when taking a math test, students anxious about math are likely to do this. But the same physiological response can also be linked to success if a student's outlook is positive," she further explained.

In other words, a student's perspective can determine success or failure. Students can change their outlooks by writing about their anxieties before a test and "off-loading" their fears, or simply thinking about a time in the past when they have succeeded, her research has shown.

Taking an exam brings on a different kind of pressure than when a student recites a memorized speech before classmates or an athlete plays before a packed stadium, other research by Beilock and her team demonstrates.

Why people choke under pressure

In another paper published this month in the "Journal of Experimental Psychology," Beilock and her colleagues identify, for the first time, different ways in which people can fumble under pressure. They also suggest remedies. The work, which was based on a series of experiments with several hundred undergraduate students in varying stressful situations, is reported in the paper "Choking Under Pressure: Multiple Routes to Skill Failure."

The experiments explored two theories of why people choke: One holds that people are distracted by worries, and as a result, fail to access their talents; another conversely proposes that stress causes people to pay too much attention to their performance and become self-conscious.

"What we showed in these experiments is that the situation determines what kind of choking develops. Knowing this can help people choose the right strategy to overcome the problem," Beilock said.

In the case of test-taking, good test preparation and a writing exercise can boost performance by reducing anxiety and freeing up working memory. The kind of choking prompted by performing before others calls for a different remedy.

"When you're worried about doing well in a game, or giving a memorized speech in front of others, the best thing to do is to distract yourself with a little tune before you start so you don't become focused on all the details of what you've done so many times before," she said. "On the playing field, thinking too much can be a bad thing," she further explained.

In the beginning stage of skill learning, your athletes will need to do three things:

Recognize previously learned movement patterns that can be used with the new skill

Learn the new movement patterns required to perform the new skill

Integrate and arrange the previously learned and new patterns into the proper sequence of movements for the new skill

To help them do this, verbally introduce the skill, explain and demonstrate the skill, and help them perform the skill well enough to start practicing it. (See Competency One for more on how to explain and demonstrate skills.) The introduction and demonstration should help them construct a motor program, a mental representation of how to perform the skill. This program is a sequence of general instructions that athletes’ nervous and muscular systems carry out to perform a skill. They will need to practice and revise the program based on feedback from themselves and from you until it is more efficient.

INTERMEDIATE STAGE

During this stage, players practice the skill. However, if that practice is to be effective, the players must

be motivated to learn,

attend to relevant cues or strategy,

receive instructional feedback on performance, and

receive reinforcement from you or others.

See Competency One for more on feedback and reinforcement.Players need a lot of feedback from you at the beginning of this stage, as they may not yet have a good perception of what the skill should feel like when it is performed properly. As their performance improves, they will develop a better feel for correct performance and will not require as much feedback.As athletes practice and progress, the following changes should occur in their performance:

Improved accuracy

Increased consistency

Decreased energy expenditure

Increased speed and improved timing

Increased anticipation/increased automation

Decreased self-talk

Increased self-confidence

Improved motor programs

Increased use of relevant motor abilities (such as eye-hand coordination, balance, or power)

This stage is complete when the athlete can perform the skill accurately and consistently.

ADVANCED STAGE

Once athletes arrive at this stage, they understand how to perform the skill and are confident about their ability to do so. Further improvement on the skill, though, may be more difficult to achieve. Athletes sometimes lose their motivation to keep trying at this point, partly because they may feel they have already mastered the skill and partly because practice doesn’t yield as much change in performance as it did during the intermediate stage. It becomes more difficult to pinpoint errors and takes more time to make the changes necessary to eliminate those errors.You can help by motivating athletes to continue trying. Reward players for making a consistent effort, and point out the long-term payoff for improving the skill.

Till Next Week

Johnny

]]>Making It Happen In 2016Tennis Blog2012-10-20T12:09:02-04:00http://www.realmacsoftware.com/blog/files/9ff8db8a8bb279a333a9a8c5a762686f-0.html#unique-entry-id-0http://www.realmacsoftware.com/blog/files/9ff8db8a8bb279a333a9a8c5a762686f-0.html#unique-entry-id-0It is hard to believe that it is almost 2013. Some great things are happening in Sports Science. In this post let’s take a look at what the USTA High Performance Coaching Programme is all about. From the USTA. It takes the guess work out of selecting a coach for your child’s development. I am one of the first graduates of the programme and strongly support it. As is everyone’s credentials are verified and education is grounded in sports science.

The USTA's Coaching Education Department is committed to offering coaches one of the highest-quality coaching education experiences in the world through participation in the USTA High Performance Coaching Program.

INCENTIVES FOR THE PROGRAM
The incentives for the coach who completes the program will be significant. They include: personal and professional growth, being involved in a program that is on the cutting edge of coaching, and becoming a part of a publicly recognized group of America’s leading coaches. In addition, we will provide ample opportunity for the high performance coach to interact and network with other leading coaches throughout the United States. We will offer ongoing continuing education through the monthly coaching education and sport science E-newsletter, event based programming and High Performance educational workshops and seminars throughout the year.

Our intent is to provide ongoing benefits to the high performance coaches who participate in the program. Our goal is to provide opportunities to help these coaches in their efforts to develop the next generation of American players.COACH SELECTIONThe USTA Coaching Education Department staff will select coaches for admission into the program. A committee comprised of the USTA Coaching Education department, as well as a USPTA and a PTR representative, will assure the stated selection philosophy is being met and will review the selection process.

In selecting coaches for the program, the USTA Coaching Education Department will be fair and equitable in choosing the most qualified applicants who possess the qualifications listed below. The coaches’ playing background will be taken into account. Consideration will also be given to coaches from diverse ethnic and socioeconomic groups as well as geographical location.

As the program grows, the USTA Coaching Education Department will continually review the selection philosophy and qualifications to ensure that the program meets its goals.

Applicants must meet at least five (5) of the criteria listed below:

Qualifications:

1. Coaching in United States. Each applicant must reside and actively coach in the United States. (MANDATORY)2. United States Tennis Association Membership. Each applicant must be a current member of the United States Tennis Association. (MANDATORY)3. Certified. USPTA P1 and/or PTR Professional level. (MANDATORY)4. Coaching Experience. At least 5 years of experience coaching high performance players.5. Sectionally Ranked Players. Currently directing a program with and/or currently serving as the primary coach of a specified number of sectionally ranked players.6. Nationally Ranked Players. Currently directing a program and/or currently serving as the primary coach of a specified number of nationally ranked players.7. Coach of Successful Players. Has coached players who have gone on to play at all levels of the game, including collegiate and professional tennis.8. Active High Performance Coach. Is actively coaching high performance players.9. Sports Science Competency Test (Level One) must have successfully completed this test.